Monday, August 3, 2015

This last week of my mission has been full of blessings. We had
the opportunity to first meet Brian, the son of Hermana
Galvez, and he was there pushing her along in preparation for her
baptism. She had her interview on Thursday, which was going longer and
longer...she was in there for about an hour, but she passed and did just
fine. She was then baptized on Saturday, but we were extremely nervous
until she actually got in the font and got immersed. The water heater in
the Baytown building works quite a bit better than most of the other
chapels, so the water at first was blazing hot. we opened the accordion
doors and it was all fogged up. We had put in cold water starting at
around halfway, but it was still just way too hot. We ended up turning
on the cold water again, and Brian got in and unplugged the font to let
out some hot water and circulate the water, but it was still too hot for
his mom. We were doing that for about 10 minutes, then an idea came to
my head...ice. We ended up running into the kitchen while everyone else
was singing hymns and bearing testimony and grabbing the 3 bags of ice
that have been in the freezer for weeks. Even with the ice we had to
wait a little longer, then it was finally cool enough to get Vilma in
the water. Then everything proceeded as scheduled and was very
spiritual, but I could tell that Satan wasn't happy that Hermana Galvez
was finally getting baptized. The Hermana's and we had some
investigators there at the baptism, we had Andrea show up, and the
Hermana's had Modesto show up. Afterwards, everyone was having a great
time with the refreshments and each of the investigators were talking
with a lot of the members. Then the next day, Sunday was great, we had
the confirmation of Hermana Galvez by Brian and we were able to
participate. I just felt the love of the Lord so strongly after the
confirmation and felt really glad that the Lord blessed me with this
opportunity my last weekend.

Sunday, after church there was a child's baptism as well and
after attending that, we went to eat with the Galvez family, and then we
were blessed with 3 lessons and 2 new investigators starting from
6:30pm and on.

I'll see you all tomorrow (I hope)!
I love you guys,
Elder Stanley Scott Dye

Monday, July 27, 2015

It has been in the 90s and 100s these past 2.5 weeks and it has
been pretty humid, but I think Texas broke me, it doesn't feel hot
anymore, I just am sweating a lot... We are still without a car and
biking a lot, just waiting for news on the car.

This last week has been really amazing, rough at times, but
amazing overall. We were blessed with so many miracles that I can't even
count them all, but they all led to the progression of our
investigators! I personally have been doing a lot of reflection this
past week on my service in the mission and especially how I am finishing
it, and so far I have found a lot of peace and comfort and I am
determined to keep going strong until the end. I don't know if I told
you this before, but for a long time in the beginning of my mission I
was looking at everyone else and the success they were having and
looking at myself and the lack of success that I had seen. It was really
a struggle and I felt like I wasn't doing enough and I felt like I was
doing something wrong. I had come to the conclusion that I really didn't
care how many people I baptized, I was just going to leave every area I
worked in in a better state than I found it and make it so they could
baptize within the transfer after my departure, which I feel like wasn't
the best thing, but it kept me going strong and pushing as hard as I
could. I have always been determined to baptize, but I was struggling
inside. I remember clearly one night that I was on an exchange with
Elder Anderson, one of my former companions, in Broadway, we were
talking and he brought that concern up. He really motivated me that
night to be the best missionary I could be and that the success would
come in the Lord's due time. Then shortly thereafter, president moved me
into Liberty and told me that he put me there because he knew I could
baptize there, and I did. I am extremely grateful for that inspiration
that he received to have me put in Liberty, and now here. Here in
Baytown, on Saturday, we should be baptizing Hermana Galvez, 4 years
after she originally started investigating the church, 2 years after her
son went out on his mission, 4 days after her son comes home, and 3
before I go home. Something I also realized in my reflecting as well as
talking with Elder Syrie this last Preparation Day, I have played a role
in the baptisms of many people. If I remember correctly, I have played
the role of finding and/or teaching at least 12 people who have been
baptized, when I originally felt like I wasn't doing anything. Now the
Lord is blessing us with another baptism in this area. I feel so blessed
and I now realize what the Lord means when he says in D&C 18:15-16:

"15 And if it so be that you should labor all your days in
crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto
me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!
16 And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you
have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be
your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!"

This week was great though, we did a lot of finding, knocking,
etc, but we didn't find much luck in that. We did find out that a less
active that basically ran away from home for 2 weeks came home, and he
is still really desiring to come back to church and activities and
everything. He came to church and had a great time in our Branch
Conference learning from President Howard, the Stake President. We also
got back in with a couple of our investigators, Luis and Ida, who are
already friends with a couple in our branch, we were able to bring over
the couple and teach the family about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and
answer some of their questions. They are really starting to think about
our teachings and they are really interested in learning more. Their
desire to follow the restored gospel is really growing! We also have had
a lot of success with Ulises and Andrea, who are very curious about the
church and the teachings. Those two couples are the only two that I
know that are so curious that they have been wondering where God came
from. Obviously we have those answers, but we have had to simply explain
the plan God has for us and help them come to the conclusion for
themselves. We have also had success with Mario and he came to church
again! He still isn't reading, but he is taking steps in the right
direction.

First, missionary work with ipads isnt too much different, you can use
them to share videos and pictures and stuff right now, but the main
changes are yet to come, and I doubt they will arrive while I'm here.
They will begin to use them as their planners and records for the people
they meet and teach, and they will eventually begin to use facebook and
skype to teach and find. I haven't even bothered carrying my ipad with
me while we have been on bikes because I see no point in having it when
Elder Hepworth has his and I can't do anything with it.

This week was very interesting and a little bit difficult, but we
were able to find success regardless of the fact that we struggled a
little. I have been taking care of my bike and made it almost two years
without any problems other than flat tires, but two weeks before I go
home, on Saturday, my axle broke, but we were able to catch it soon
enough that Elder Hepworth and I were able to tear my bike wheel apart
and replace the axle with one from a spare wheel we had. That took a
little bit of time on Saturday, but we were able to still get out and
talk with multiple people and even teach 4 people, who sadly live in a
different area and don't exactly understand the importance of our
message.

We had multiple blessings from the Lord, including Hermana Galvez
finally being able to come back to church, Mario finally coming, and
Andrea and Ulises coming back home from Mexico and still being super
prepared. We were extremely excited to see each of them start
progressing again. We have been working hard with each of them and they
always had little things holding them back from being progressing.

We found some success contacting this week, we found a man that
is super prepared and has already read from the Book of Mormon and he
just has to gain a testimony of it. We also found a really awesome woman
during Hour of Power and her only concern is that her husband might not
be quite as receptive. We finally got to get in with a woman named
Beatriz, who we found on exchanges with Elder Dennis, but we were never
able to get in with her, and a man named Jose, who was a referral from
the English Elders and just happens to be really interested in learning
more.

The district in all has been doing well, we are all just
struggling with by having a small teaching pool and trying to find new
people. We have some really amazing people that are super close to
baptism and should be baptized pretty soon.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

This last week has been a bit
different for us than in weeks past, and it was quite interesting. Monday
while we were at dinner with a member, somebody backed into our car and
left a few dents in it, so when we got out and saw it, we had to call
Elder Swank. He ended up taking the car to repair it on Tuesday, so we
had a week full of biking, which was kind of good because we were having
a hard time getting in with investigators, so it got us out contacting a
lot more. We had a rough time finding people to talk to for the first
few days, but then we saw a ton of miracles in contacting on the
weekend. From Friday through the end of Sunday we contacted a total of
94 people, which was amazing! We got a good number of potentials that
are pretty interested and we were able to set up appointments for a few
of them.

We had the wonderful opportunity to continue working with Hermana
Galvez, who wants to be baptized on the 1st of August, but we are
facing problems in getting her to church. We have found that we probably
need to change our teaching style in order to help her better understand the importance of church. So far we have taught
her the majority of the lessons and we are thinking of ways to be able
to help her more.

We have also been working with Mario, who sadly won't be able to
make his date for the 25th of July. We have to go in there and talk to
him a little more about what his desires are. The pathway to becoming a member of Christ's church does include reading about Christ (thru scripture reading) and attending church each week. He seems to be
willing to learn, but we have to gauge whether he just wants to be doing
a "bible study" or an actual application of the teachings of Christ. Only by applying Christ's teaching can we make the changes, and stick with those changes that bring us to Christ. Satan uses procrastination as a tool, so we just need to help Mario to make and keep decisions that will take him to Christ.

We are excited to pick up on teaching Ulises and Andrea again
because they are finally back from their trip to Mexico! We have a
lesson already set up with them with the Branch Mission Leader, Hermano
Valadez, who, along with his wife. Looking forward to this visit.

The district has been working hard despite the setbacks that
always come. The Hermanas have had a hard time finding new
investigators, but they keep going out there and working hard. All of us
have found that we have been kind of falling into a ' contacting' rut, but, with Elder Dennis help and advice, we will put into practice more variety into our contacting...making it fun and interesting
by using the Gospel Art Book. We found a good amount of success in
finding potentials as we used it on exchanges and I have committed the
Hermanas to do the same.

This week we have interviews with President Drake on Wednesday,
making it so I will be interviewed by him twice in the span of about 3
weeks.

This last week was a little difficult, but we pushed through and tried
to make the best of it. We sadly weren't able to meet with many of our
investigators until Wednesday evening or Thursday. Andrea and Ulises
weren't available because they went to Mexico for vacation until the
11th, Mario was busy with work and we were continually trying to get in
with him, and Hermana Galvez usually has us come over on Wednesday, but
she wasn't going to be available. We still saw many miracles regardless
of the fact that we had those struggles.

Instead of doing the normal Hour of Power and just knocking, we had the
feeling that we needed to visit Mario, so we said a prayer went up and
knocked the door, no answer, we knocked again, no answer, and again, no
answer. We started walking back to the car to go to the place where we
originally determined as our Hour of Power spot for last week, but then
he opened the door and called out to us. We had a really amazing lesson
with Mario in which he confirmed the baptismal date for July 25th.
We expressed the importance of him coming to church and reading and
praying, and he decided that he was going to make church a priority.
We were then able to get in with him on Saturday and speak with him
about church and read with him because he sadly didn't read, but we
definitely saw a difference in him after that lesson during the Hour of
Power. He sadly got called into work on Sunday, but he called us in the
morning saying that we could come over today (Monday). We have plans to
finally get a member over with us, which has been nearly impossible due
to our inability to set up appointments with Mario.

We also saw some incredible progress with an 18 year old less active
that we have been working with, Ricardo, and he finally came back to
church! Last week we felt like we needed to give him a copy of Preach My
Gospel to help him study the scriptures better, which we did, but sadly
he hasn't studied. We can't really blame him though, his mom took away
his glasses with the hope that it would prevent him going out and
getting into bad things, which ironically, has prevented him from doing
the good things instead...oh well. We met with him a few times and he
got his siblings to go to Mutual this week, then he came to church and
we were able to convince him to go into the youth class instead of
Gospel Principles, so he would actually learn something that we weren't
already teaching him. We talked with him after church and he suddenly
got his fire back! He is really excited for everything again. He just needs to realize that the excitement he feels is because of the spirit that can finally dwell with him. I am super excited for him!

We have seen progress in some other people as well, but it has just been
a bit slower than with Mario, Hermana Galvez, Ricardo, and Andrea and
Ulises. We also saw a ton of finding miracles over the weekend, we were
surprised by how nice people were on July 4th. They were all willing to
talk a little, but they were almost all busy preparing for family
gatherings and wouldn't sit down and talk. We were however able to set up quite a
few appointments for this week to teach all of these people.

We
had an amazing week, but it was really hot. We had a mission-wide thing
where we bike from the time we leave the apartment until around 5ish,
and I am really brown because of it, it was probably mid to high 90s, at
one point the thermometer read 103, but I'm not sure if it was...
Yesterday we had a huge storm come in and it knocked out the lights at
church until 10:20, so we only had Sacrament meeting, then most people
left, but we were stuck talking to people and the lights came on for the
English ward luckily.

This week was full of miracles, sure there were a few disappointments,
but the Lord blessed us more than we deserve. This week we were
continuing working with Andrea and her husband, Ulises, and they are
doing AMAZING! We were talking with our Branch Mission Leader, Brother
Valadez, about some of their concerns. We invited him to
our lesson with them Wednesday, sat down, then he and his wife took it
away. They were talking for about 20 minutes before starting our lesson,
and in that time they introduced themselves, made them feel
comfortable. We introduced the first topic we were going to
talk about, then they just started teaching. They proceeded to teach
the rest of the lesson, we literally only introduced the topic and
testified, then we had to interrupt them because our hour was up and we
had another appointment to go to. The Valadez family ended up staying
for about another 1.5 hours just talking answering questions and
concerns. Member "missionaires" are so influential because they can connect with those investigating in the area in which they live. We missionaries are only in an area for 'so' long, and then are transferred out. Members in the area are there to stay, so connections are so important. The Valadez family then invited Andrea, Ulises, and their children over for a
Family Home Evening for Friday. We opted not to go to the FHE, but we
asked the members if they could talk about fasting, prayer, and
scripture study during the FHE. They did exactly that and then helped
them learn a little about the temple because the Valadez family is going
to be sealed in early August. Also during the FHE they talked about
Baptism and some of their concerns as well as how they can prepare
themselves. Andrea and Ulises ended up staying until about 10 or 10:30pm
and were surprised by how fast the time went. They are now like best
friends with each other. We ended up going over on Saturday to give
their baby boy a blessing of health and took Brother Valadez and he gave
a beautiful blessing, and Sunday when Andrea and the kids came to
church, the baby looked a lot healthier.

Elder Hepworth and I were talking about the branch and expressed to each other how we can make
the whole branch like the Valadez family because they worked miracles
with this family and now they are basically doing the work (with us just
helping them and supporting them). One of the reasons I mention this is
because Brother Valadez also talks with his co-workers about the gospel
and invites them to church, one of which decided to come to church
yesterday and we were able to teach him a little! We are working with
the Hermanas to make plans of working with the branch to make them all
like this one family. We were thinking about doing a couple of Preach My
Gospel classes to introduce it the branch, and then help them know how to study the manual, so they can prepare themselves to help us and their nonmember
friends.

We have also been working with Hermana Galvez, and she is progressing
really well. She no longer has problems with the Word of Wisdom, and has
no problems with the Law of Chastity, nor the 10 Commandments. This
last week we taught her about keeping the Sabbath day holy and helped
her understand some of the things we should and shouldn't do on Sunday.
She is really doing well, she is just waiting until her son, Brian, gets
home from his mission on July 27th.

We are really seeing the work bloom in our area, we are working with
Andrea and Ulises towards the baptismal date of July 18th, Hermana
Galvez is working for being baptized August 1st, and we were able to set
a baptismal date with our investigator, Mario, for July 25th. We just
need to confirm Mario's baptismal date, and pray and fast for Andrea and
Ulises to get the divorce miraculously expedited so they can get married and
baptized for their date because that is honestly the only thing holding
them back. It would be nice if you kept each of them in your prayers.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Hey guys, you all had a nice week as it sounds, but it sounds like it
has been pretty hot in Utah, it has been in the 80s and 90s here, but it
has been raining a ton, and I mean A TON, Houston has already broken
records for the most rain in a year, and it is still the first half of
the year... We can't help but think that with this weather we will
eventually get a hurricane this year, but the question is, will I still
be in the mission or not? I kinda want that experience, but I don't at
the same time, especially knowing that Mom would be freaking out ;). By
the way Dad, Happy Father's Day! I just wanted to send you a picture, so
I had Bro. Gálvez take/send the picture.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

This last week was filled with many miracles as well as disappointments.
We saw success with mainly Andrea and her husband, Ulises, and Hermana
Gálvez, the nonmember mother of two member boys, one of which is in Peru
on a mission. We found Andrea and Ulises last Sunday and taught them
about the Restoration, then this week we went back there with our branch
president and his wife, the Mendoza's, to teach them about the Book of
Mormon and the Plan of Salvation, but only Andrea was there. While we
were talking about the purpose of this life, we mentioned baptism a
second time because they had already accepted the invitation to be
baptized on the 18th of July, and she just opened up completely, telling
us that she and Ulises weren't actually married, but they were already
working on getting Ulises divorced so they can get married. She
expressed their desire to be baptized, but their desire to be married
first, which made us really happy. We were able to help them the next
time we went over to because our Branch Mission Leader talked with us
about how he had gone through the same situation and he wanted to refer
them to the lawyer that he had used to be able to get divorced to be
able to be baptized. Andrea and Ulises were thrilled to hear about the
help that they could get and are progressing nicely, they just weren't
able to make it to church due to work and a sick child. They have even
mentioned that they don't drink or smoke, just a little coffee here and
there. We have plans to talk to them about prayer and fasting this next
week so we can fast for a miraculously fast divorce process.

We were extremely excited to be able to talk with Hermana Gálvez about a
date for baptism this week because she finally found out when her son
is getting home from his mission! We went over to visit her with the
Relief Society president, and her husband, because they LOVE Hermana
Gálvez. We were able to talk to her about the Word of Wisdom because
that was supposedly one of her biggest issues. (she used to drink coffee,
but when we asked her if she had any problems with any of the forbidden
substances, she said she was fine with all of them, she even explained
how she only drinks water, juice, and the occasional cup of milk. though water, juice and milk are all okay:) She is
really prepared to be baptized--she just needs to continue reading and
praying. Her son, Brian, is coming home on the 27th of July, so we
planned on inviting her to be baptized on the 1st of August when we went
over for dinner on Saturday for her other son, Justin's, birthday, but
they had company so we didn't feel comfortable extending the invitation
with them there. Instead, on Sunday when we stopped by to give a
couple of ties to Justin for his birthday, we made the invitation and
she accepted! We now just have the task of continually following up and
helping her learn the rest of the stuff needed for being baptized. She
had asked what the benefits of being baptized were, so we got to teach
her a little about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, then she remembered her
sons talking about the temple and being able to go inside, so we talked
about baptisms for the dead and how they are similar to what she was
going to do. She has a lot of good questions, and we are really looking
forward to helping her address them and gain a stronger testimony.

So if all goes right, we should have at least 3 baptisms during this new
transfer, but I am hoping for many more than that! I am desiring to
finish what I have started, and do it the right way, giving my 110%!
This last week was great for us in the fact that we had more lessons and
more contacts than all of the other weeks, and we saw so many miracles.
We were able to follow the Spirit in finding a lost sheep on Saturday,
and are looking forward to helping him get back to church because he was
"only kept from the [church] because he knew not where to find it!" He
has a son in El Salvador preparing to serve a mission and 3 other kids
and his wife, and they are all active. He is only here in the United
States for working to help his family. I felt extremely stupid when we
found him because I have been feeling the need to go down that street
these past few weeks and apparently his wife was asking him when he was
going to go back to church and he had said he would go when the
missionaries passed by and found him and gave him the address...well,
we've done that now!

The branch has been growing little by little. People have been lead to
moving to Baytown, and there are now about 3 new families that have moved
into the branch--soon to be more families and individuals, including
this man we found. We look forward to the progress being made in the
branch, and in our area. The Hermanas have been finding a lot of success
as well. They are still getting along great, and I look forward to seeing
them have a lot of success this transfer.

Hey guys, it seems like you all had a great week, especially Shannon
getting a new house and stuff. This last week went really well and we
saw a lot of success! We were able to break out of some little
unproductive habits and see the blessings of doing so. This last week we
found 9 new investigators because we were able to follow the spirit in
what to do and where to go. We were blessed in the receiving of a
referral from one of Hermana Walsh's converts in Pasadena for a man
named Ulises and his wife, Andrea. On Sunday, when we were going to a
different lesson, we both had the feeling of stopping by this couple's
house and the Ulises was outside and was really excited to see us! It
turn out that the he had gone to our church in Mexico about 2 or 3 times
when he was about 12 or 13 years old. His friend from work (Hermana
Walah's convert) had been talking with him and invited him to have the
missionaries over and he really wanted that! He invited us right in and
we were able to speak with him and his wife, sharing the message of the
Restoration and it answered many of their questions, including why there
are so many churches out in the world. They accepted a baptismal
invitation for the 18th of July and they seem truly willing to do what
is necessary to come to know the truth.

What made Sunday even better was the fact that as we were walking the
long way back to the car, we saw a guy that Elder Knudsen and I
contacted one of our last days together and we were able to talk to him
and his mother. They invited us inside and we shared with them the
message of the Restoration as well, but we sadly weren't able to commit
them to a baptismal date. We did make an attempt, and they were
willing to let us come back and explain a little more about the restored
authority and the Book of Mormon. When we got out of the lesson, we had
no idea why the Lord suddenly decided to bless us with 4 new
investigators in about an hour or hour and a half. On Saturday and
Sunday, we found 7 of our 9 new investigators, and then we were blessed
with 3 more on Monday.

The district is doing really well and both of our areas saw a ton of
miracles leading us to more prepared people and progress with the ones
we have found already.

Hey guys, it sounds like you all had a great week and I am super excited
for Shanny and Simon on their acquiring of a house! Thank you all for
the birthday wishes and I want you to know that I got to go to a pizza
buffet with my district after District Meeting on Friday and my
companion paid for me as a little gift. We ended up getting cheesecake
the next day at a member's home (without them knowing that my birthday
was the day before), and I got some happy birthday texts from some of
the members because one of the only members that I told about my
birthday posted on the branch Facebook page that it was my birthday.

This week went well for us, though it was a little rough due to the difficulty
of getting in with our investigators, but we tried to use our time in a
good effective manner. We went out trying to find new people quite a bit
and also worked with a good number of the less active members. We have
been working with the ward list a lot to try to make the necessary
corrections, and we have actually had a good amount of success in finding
more members to work with, and the majority are part member families!

As we have been searching out new areas to go finding in, we have also
found success and now we know of more places that have a good number of
Hispanics that we can talk to. We have been receiving more referrals and
I have even noticed that there are times that we have had good
contacting miracles!

One miracle we ended up having was just yesterday, we felt like we
needed to try a family that we haven't been able to contact in a couple
of weeks, so we went up to where they live. They weren't home, but we
were able to talk with another investigator for a while as we helped him
try to fix his lawn mower. Then, not feeling quite satisfied with that,
we went over to another person we had contacted a few weeks ago. They
were busy as well, but they mentioned that they would be interested in
the English class we offer and said that he would try to come. That was
better, but it still didn't quite feel like that was what we were needed
for in that area at that time. On our way back to the car, I saw a man
and a woman sitting in a couple of chairs drinking and felt like I
should talk to them. We started to talk with them and they seemed really
cool, but they just didn't seem too interested. I felt like I needed to
ask the man why he only went to the Catholic Church when he went to
church, then I felt to ask him why he thinks there are so many churches.
When I asked those two questions he opened up and said how he feels
that there should be just one church and that he only goes to the
Catholic church because it is what his parents taught him. He and the
woman asked us why there were so many churches and other things that
pertain to the message of the restoration. We were basically able to
teach them about the apostasy and the restoration while we were there
and they seem really interested and invited us back for this next
weekend!

We had a lot of other miracles, but that was our biggest one that we
saw, other than us receiving a really interested member referral that we
will be teaching tonight or sometime a little later this week! We had a
really funny story as well from yesterday. We were looking for members
trying to make corrections to the ward list and one of the places that
we tried last night was definitely not a member. We knocked on the door
of where a member used to live and the man who answered the door didn't
even let us say "hello" or "good evening" before he started swearing at
us and screaming that we should leave saying that if we didn't leave, he
would call the cops on us, which made us laugh a little as we got back
in the car. It is unfortunate that he truly doesn't know what he is missing and he will someday meet the Lord at the judgement bar of God. We both just wish
he would give the gospel a chance, but he isn't and will have to take
ownership of his choices at that last day. We both just see that as extra
evidence that this is true because there is only true opposition against
our church.

The district has been doing well, we are all kinda struggling with
finding a high number of people to teach, but we are trying to pull
everything back together and manage our time better (than we have in
weeks' past). We are trying to work well with the people we have, and that
is helping them start progressing. Of course, there still are some obstacles in
the way of getting some of them progressing, but we are moving in a positive direction.

Hey guys it sounds like your week was great, ours was a little hectic,
we had mission conference on Tuesday and Thursday we got iPads. Mine is
just a loaner and will be returned when I go home, but it has been
really helpful because we have been able to show video clips in some
lessons and it really helps.

This last week was a little rough, but we were trying to make the most
out of it. We ended up going through a good amount of the branch list to
make corrections and to get to know more of the members. With that time
taken to step back a little and assess how we can move forward with
more success, we were able to set up appointments for this next week
with multiple less active families that we have never met!

We were also able to make some progress with the part member family we
have been working with, sadly the two kids weren't able to make it to
church because they were with their father and step-mother out of town.
We were able to get them to mutual on Thursday evening and we got their
brother to church again. And he was able to go to a youth fireside in the
evening on Sunday, so that made us happy. Him coming to church again
allowed him to set up an interview with the branch president, so he
should be figuring out what all is necessary for being able to push
forward and progress. We look forward to the siblings being baptized,
but we will need to push back the date because we haven't been able to
visit them enough.

Elder Hepworth and I are
getting along great, as well as the hermanas. We are working hard with
the branch to build unity in the families and
the branch. The hermanas mentioned that they had a hard time last week,
but they were able to plan to be able to work more effectively and
efficiently.

Well, it sounds like you all had an exciting week and were really
excited to spend time with family and now welcome the new little Pence
into the family.

This last week has gone really well. Even though we weren't really
able to increase the number of lessons we had, we were able to make
them more effective. These past couple of weeks we have had the
wonderful opportunity to work with a less active family, the
Lopez/Barajas family, that is extremely prepared and "golden," in that they are
just ready to come back to church. We have had the chance to speak
with the younger siblings that are not currently members of the church.
The little siblings are really excited about learning and they have
accepted a baptismal date for the 6th of June! And the best part is, the
mother, who is a less active member, is on board, she will let them go
through with it! One of the best things about this family is that they
love us, we saw them almost every day last week and they were loving it,
they invited us over three times, came to mutual, a branch activity,
and to church! We also saw a bunch of miracles in finding new people to
teach, we are still sorting out the more prepared ones from the ones
just willing to listen, and not act, but we are excited for the success
that is coming.

Other than that, we have just been trying to clean up the branch
list and find new investigators. We have been just seeing a ton of
miracles come from obedience, then the days that we aren't quite as
obedient, we struggle more. I have been seeing more of a correlation
between obedience/faith and the blessings the longer I've been out. I
remember the time that I went on exchanges with Elder Jones when I had
only been out for almost 6 months and the success that we saw, teaching
about 6 lessons and finding 8 new investigators, then comparing it to
Tuesday, when we were with Elder Johnson; all 5 of our set lessons
worked out, 2 being with members and the other 3 with new investigators.
I feel like now, more than ever, I need to be obedient because I truly
want to finish my mission strong and see the success that every
missionary desires.

This week went very well here in Baytown with Elder Hepworth. He truly
desires to work and we work in a similar way. We saw many miracles come
about this past week. One of the biggest miracles was with a Less-Active
family that only a few of the family members are members of the church.
We went to visit Hermana Gomez, a Less-Active that Elder Knudsen and I
found last week, and she referred us over to her good friend, who is
also a member. We went to visit their family and found them on their way
out, but they said we could come by the next day. When we went over,
their son, Ricardo let us right in and instantly started crying and he
started pouring out his heart and talking about all of the bad things he
had gone through in the past 5 years that he hasn't been going to
church. He explained that he was praying for help and then we showed up.
He is ready to come back to the fold and is tired of being the cause of
so much trouble and worry for his parents. He brought in his little
brothers and had them listen to us and we invited them to church and an
activity the branch is having. We went over the next day to give them a
couple of white shirts for church and they started talking about them
wanting to take the next step and change the music they listen to. We
helped them with that and helped Ricardo get his suit for church, then
they gave us a call at 7:40am Sunday and said that they were going to
need a ride, but they were already ready for church. They had a great
time at church and Ricardo brought his little siblings and a friend of
theirs to church! I am excited to see where Ricardo goes with this
because he keeps asking us what a mission is like and what we do as
missionaries.

This week we also met two black ladies that said that they
have seen Elder Hepworth before and we have no idea where or when, but
he is really creeped out by it... He wants to know how they know him
because neither of them knew where they had seen him before or even if
it truly was him. But it was pretty funny to see his reaction.

A little bit about Elder Hepworth, he is from Idaho
(making him companion #2 from one of those tiny little non-existent
communities of Idaho, the first being Elder Owens from Kuna, which isn't
quite as tiny, but still small)

He played football in high school and graduated and has been on his mission since June 2014.

Hey guys, it was really great being able to talk with the family
yesterday and be able to talk in Spanish a little, I hope that everyone
who speaks Spanish was able to understand it and translate for those who
don't know any Spanish.

This week was a little rough, a good chunk of proselyting time
was taken out by service both on Thursday and an unexpected need of
service for the Stake President on Saturday. We weren't really able to
establish contact with our different investigators, only a couple of
them answered the door or the phone, and it was kinda hard because it
seemed like transfers were very much distracting Elder Knudsen. We were
trying to find people, but things kept coming up and we didn't use our
time efficiently causing all of our numbers to plummet. I feel like we
didn't use our bikes quite enough this week, but we got on them more
than we have been. I am really planning on using the bikes a lot more
this next transfer so we actually get out and talk with people. I also
would like to be visiting more Less Active Members, Elder Knudsen was
one of the people a little confused about the Less Active visits. He
didn't ever want to try to visit them because we didn't have a member
with us, but I hope that with visiting them we can actually help people
come back into activity in the church.

Other than all of that, we actually had a really miraculous
weekend apart from the Mother's Day phone call, we found multiple people
that are interested in taking the lessons and we were able to get in
with investigators and wish some people a happy Mother's Day. It was
really amazing, we decided to stop by the house of Luz and her family, a
family that is really prepared, but for some reason wasn't going to
continue investigating, and we wished Luz a happy Mother's Day and she
was really excited to see us and was willing to set up another
appointment for this week! I am so glad that we stopped by and were able
to brighten her day!

I really love it here in Baytown and I can't wait to get to
know my new companion, we have the new transfer meeting today at 4pm and
luckily we were able to figure out rides and stuff. This next week I
should be able to tell you about my new companion. I look forward to
this new transfer and what it will hold. I am going to do exactly as Dad
mentioned, work as hard and effectively as I can, especially because I
know my purpose out here and I know how to fulfill it. I can't say the
same for when I get home :P I don't really like the feeling of all this
coming to an end. I have the same amount of time left right now as I had
under my belt just before Thanksgiving 2013, which isn't very long.

Hey guys, this week was a little rough, we had a really hard time
getting in with any of our investigators and it is starting to seem like
Elder Knudsen is ready to leave Baytown, he has kinda given up on this
transfer. Going back to the week, we got in with three of the
investigators after multiple tries, but the rest just were really busy.
Sadly Luz Silva and her daughters kind of dropped us, it seems like Luz
still wants to have us come over, but her daughters don't really want to
change, apparently that's the situation with them, but I have a hard
time believing that to be true. The daughters seemed more interested
than Luz and Luz seemed really interested herself.

We were able to teach a couple of our investigators more about
the Book of Mormon and how it is important and they seem to be more
interested in learning. One of them, Nery, was very hesitant with the
Book of Mormon because she believes the Bible so much that "there
couldn't ever be another book more correct than the Bible". We had to
explain a little bit more about the Restoration of the church, but we
were able to help her see the need of the Book of Mormon and she
realized that she couldn't say the book isn't true if she hasn't ever
read it. We were able to express how much the Book of Mormon has helped
us in our lives and how it can help her in hers.

Oh yeah, and a little bit of news is that now transfers are
going to be Mondays at 4pm, so the departing missionaries will be flying
home on the Tuesday. I thought I should tell you now because it means I
will be getting home on August 4th instead of August 5th in the case
that any of you are wanting to be there for my homecoming (which I hope
is all of you ;)).

Yesterday the English Elders in our area had 4 baptisms, which is kinda
funny because basically 3 of them were just handed to them and they just
needed to teach them a little, and get them interviewed. Which I
actually had the opportunity to interview all 4 of them. I was so
blessed with the opportunity to interview a woman named Vansha Gray, who
actually found us about 2.5-3 weeks ago. Attached are pictures of us
four Elders with her.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

It is always exciting/crazy reading your emails, Shannon with her house
hunting, Carolyn with her schooling endeavors, etc. It is just crazy to
think that nobody is going to be living where they were the last time I
visited them...

This week went pretty well, we saw a lot of miracles happen,
especially as we went through the old potentials in the Area Book! We
found a very prepared family, the Silva's, and there are 4 people in the
family that are of age for baptism! They are all very into religion and
want to grow closer to God. They accepted a baptismal date for May
23rd, and we are very excited for working with them to achieve that
goal! We also found a new investigator named Ozzy. He is very prepared
and had questions that he stated nobody was able to answer except for us. He feels
like the Bible went through the hands of many people in the way that
the game "Telephone" works (remember the words goes from one person to the next usually changing
slightly along the way). He basically knew what the apostasy was without
knowing WHAT it was.

We also had exchanges with the Zone Leaders on Friday, which is
always a great experience. I had the opportunity to be with Elder
Johnson and learn from him as well as help him out. I have really come
to love exchanges because now the Zone Leaders are more on the same page
as me because we have been out the same amount of time and we can help
one another. Elder Johnson and I had a really miraculous exchange, we
found about 8 potential investigators for my area and we also taught the
Silva family the first lesson and extended the baptismal date. We were
able to meet with a less active and get to know him and boldly, but
lovingly call him to repentance. I was extremely happy to see him come
to church on Sunday, he responded well to the invitation.

It sounds like your week was great except for the crazy weather, but we
had crazy weather out here too. It was raining most of the week, then
yesterday was sunny and nice outside until about 7:10pm, suddenly some
menacingly dark clouds started coming in. By 7:30 the clouds covered
half of the sky and it was a lot darker than it had been only minutes
before. We hadn't eaten dinner, so we decided that we didn't really like
the look of the skies and we were just going to go in for dinner. We
checked the phone when we got home and saw that we had a text that we
missed, it said that there was a tornado warning and everyone should get
inside. It said that it had been seen, I will be sending my SD card
home soon, and I took a few videos and a bunch of pictures of it.

Other than that, this week went really well, we were having the
constant need to find more people though. We saw much success as we went
contacting, we actually were able to teach 13 new people, but sadly, a
couple had to be passed on to the English Elders, one was going out of
town for 1-2 months to visit his father, and three decided they didn't
want to hear any more. Regardless, we still were able to find 7 new
investigators, and the majority seem like they will begin to progress
very soon. With the call of our new Branch Mission Leader we have seen
more help from the members than I have ever seen. We were able to bring
some members out, but sadly some of the lessons didn't work out so we
had to try some other people. We ended up going over to visit a
less-active family with Hermano Valadez, the Branch Mission Leader, and
we actually caught them at home and found out more of why they don't
come to church. We are super excited for where this area seems to be
going! It is also really amazing to know that Matthew, one of the
referrals given to the English Elders, went to church Sunday. We found
him on Saturday, and now he will be getting baptized on May 3rd along
with Vansha G, a person who contacted us about 2 weeks ago during the
Spoke'n Pedal. They both show extreme desire to grow closer to God and
to act upon the message, I can't wait to see that miracle happen!

The district has been doing well, the Hermanas recently had to
drop a lot of their investigators, but that gave them more time to find
those who are really prepared. We had a really inspired District Meeting
that I honestly didn't know exactly what to do until we went to the
Temple on Thursday and I prayed in the Celestial Room. The meeting was
really focused on what we can do to bring the Spirit into the lessons
more and to leave better commitments to be able to allow the
investigators to feel that same spirit that we brought. We all realized
we just needed to go back to the basics and back to the days of
training, when we didn't know what to say or how to say it, when we
stuck more to the guidelines and teachings in Preach My Gospel because
it was all we knew. We were able to role play using the How to Begin
Teaching points and we each applied it to our real teaching and I have
felt the spirit more as we teach.

(this past week I failed to tell you that the Mission President has called me to be a District Leader. There are more responsibilities, like baptism interviews, and leading district meetings, but I feel that I'm up to these responsibilities. I know that my mission president has confidence in me, and I trust the Lord.)

This week went pretty well, but we sadly weren't able to get any of our
investigators to church or with a date. We worked hard and tried to be
diligent in our efforts of finding people and as a result, we found many
new investigators and more potentials to try. We were able to teach
almost every day this week as well, less than we wanted, but it seems to
be looking up for the next few weeks. We found a guy named Justiniano,
or in English, Justin, and he seems really interested. He is a very open
young man not too much older than us. We actually contacted him after
having walked by twice. He was blasting music from his car and we both
just had the thought that he was just a punk (I know we shouldn't judge), but then
we felt like we should go talk to him and he was really open to us. We
were able to set a return appointment for tomorrow, Tuesday, and invite
him to church and English class on Thursdays. We look forward to
teaching him, as well as having him at the English class, but we never
would have found out how interested he was if we didn't talk to him. We
also found a couple, Lupita and Jonathan, on Sunday. We contacted them
about a week ago and they didn't seem too interested at the time, but we
decided to go by and their son let us come in. We started talking to
them and taught them the Restoration and before we even extended the
invitation to church, Jonathan asked, "So, where's the church?" We
started describing how to get there and invited them and he said, "Yeah,
we'll go, that's why I asked where the church was." It was great! What
made it better is that Jonathan was starting to read from the pamphlet
right when we said that God and Jesus were different people while
describing the First Vision. We have another appointment set up with
them and we have already figured out which member we would like to come
with us.

I also had the opportunity to perform a baptismal interview for an
investigator of the sisters in my district, and it was an amazing
experience. I was scared that I would have to tell Abraham that he
couldn't be baptized almost the whole time because he told me early on
that he wasn't married legally to his wife, but he failed to mention
until the end that she still lives in Mexico, so it isn't a problem yet.
He was baptized Saturday and confirmed on Sunday.

Hey guys, I am in Baytown now, in the Texas Spanish Branch. My new
companion is Elder Knudsen from a little northern Utah town. He has been out for about 8 months now.

I'm really excited for the opportunity to be here in Baytown in
the Texas Branch, but I'm going to be honest and say that this week was
rough, we were definitely seeing the consequences of the lack of
contacting and new investigators of the last few weeks. We also ran into
a few problems for contacting earlier in the week because Elder Knudsen
had some bike problems that needed to be fixed. Luckily, I was able to
fix the various problems making it so he didn't have to find a bike shop
to do it, but sadly that took some of our proselyting time away. Elder
Knudsen and I have committed ourselves to talk to everyone-all nationalities- in order to get new people to teach and to show the Lord
our desire to do His work. We finally were able to get in contact with one of
their potentials that seemed really interested. We were able to speak
with him about the restoration of the gospel and the Book of Mormon. We
invited him to conference and to read the Book of Mormon, but we haven't
been able to contact him since and he wasn't able to make it to
conference.

Elder Knudsen and I look forward to a great week this week
despite the difficulties of last week. We will still be contacting a
lot, but we have a few potential investigators that said we could come
by this week and they are pretty good finds. It was a great start to the
week having General Conference ( https://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2015/04?lang=eng ) because I feel like this conference was
based around having an eternal perspective. I have really seen that kind
of attitude bless my mission more recently because, as I've applied it
and internalized it more, I have seen my attitude towards the work
change. I am understanding more of the importance of obedience, the
importance of diligence, and the need of sharing this message with the
world. I have also grown my testimony of President Drake's calling as
our Mission President because the instructions that the prophets are
giving us are the same as what he has been giving us, but their instructions will also be helpful further on...past the end of my mission. I feel like so many of the
talks were just directed straight towards me-- I am glad I get the
opportunity to listen to a prophet's voice every few months. I do have a testimony that Pres. Thomas S Monson is the current prophet for the Lord and that his instruction is what the Lord would have us hear at this time.

1) Elder Syrie has been here for 2 transfers, so since February. He has been out for 9 months and is from Washington state.

2) We have tried to teach Ernesto's sister, but haven't gotten back into contact with
her since we first saw her. We told him about finding her that same
week :) She speaks English better than Spanish, so we would keep her.

3) I actually will be moving, I got transferred, so don't send me mail until I can tell you where I go! :)

This week was rough for us in finding new investigators, we spent hours
going around biking, knocking, looking through former investigator logs and
trying them, but it was to no avail. We were trying to figure out what
was going on, but as we looked at it we were just seeing that a lot of
the people that we contacted were good contacts and good people, but they
were all just busy that week... Finally on Friday, the Spanish Elders
gave us two referrals, so we called one, and she was interested, but
didn't know what her schedule would be, so we need to call her again
this week. Then on Sunday, we finally just decided to go over and try to
visit the other referral. We got there, and Elder Syrie mentioned that
he and Elder Croney had previously knocked on that house, and when we saw the man,
he realized he had talked to him about a month ago and he was
completely closed to the gospel, he just said "I'm Pentecostal" to them.
When we talked with him, he still seemed set in his beliefs, but he was
open to learn. He invited us right in and let us teach him the
Restoration, and he was open to the message. We talked about the Book of
Mormon as the evidence and he is willing to read it and he wants to at
least learn and follow God's will. We were so excited about that! We had
been waiting all week to finally teach somebody, or more truly, we were
searching all week for people to teach, and on Sunday, at about 4pm, we
found them! It also just shows that you can't just give up on people
you've already talked to and areas that you've already knocked, people
always change.

In terms of our investigators, we saw only Oscar M, Susan and
Margaret S this last week, everyone else seemed to be busy all the
time. We helped get Margaret's son, Alex, to scouts and he loved it! We
also were able to give Susan, another investigator, a blessing of health
because she was feeling pretty sick, so we talked with her about
blessings with her as well. Oscar is still super amazing, and in the
last week he said he read pretty slowly, but he talked about how the
Lamanites and the Nephites split up into the two separate groups, so
later we looked up where that was, and it turns out that he read at
least until 2 Nephi 5! But the sad thing is that he leaves today for
Arizona for the next month for work...why does everyone have to be so
busy with work!(just kidding, I know that people have to work, but this message is so important).

I have felt the love of all the members in the ward and branch and have
seen many opportunities to serve. Remember how we had been working with
April and Valeria in the branch? They told me yesterday that they
decided to get baptized April 12th! They really want me there, so I am
going to ask permission to go. Also, Josh G has also decided to
get baptized, we will be stopping by there today to pick up my watch
that he is fixing, so I will ask him if he has decided on a date. I am
so excited for these people! I know they will be baptized as well as the
people we were working with here in the ward.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

This week went pretty well for us, we were able to contact effectively
and many times the contact turned into teaching. We struggled with
getting scheduled lessons that actually ended up working at the time we set
them up, making it difficult to get members out this week. We were able
to see many miracles happen during the week, we were able to finally
get in with our investigator, Lynn B, because he has been working a
ton, but had a day that he took off this week. Lynn is sincerely
looking for an answer of truth to the things that he is being taught. He is willing to put
forth the effort to follow the Word of Wisdom. He is a good man and
already avoids any problems with the Law of Chastity, and he has
supposedly already paid tithing or given a donation to the church. He is
good friends with Bishop Devereaux, so if he has any questions, he asks
us or bishop. Other than Lynn, we were able to visit Margaret and help
her move. She accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 11th of
April, but we haven't been able to get in with her to confirm her
commitment for that date. We visited with Danny, another one of our
investigators, who sincerely desires to follow God's will. He has
questions that nobody else wants to ask. He knew basically the whole
Plan of Salvation from studying the Bible, and he really desires to ask
God about baptism by proper authority. He has been baptized at
four different times in his life, but he still has felt like something
was missing, and he thinks it is possible that the missing piece is the
authority (which is true).

Elder Syrie and I have been getting along well, we opened up about some
things that have been bugging us and we are making goals to improve in
those aspects. Overall, I love serving with Elder Syrie, he has a lot of
faith, we are just really trying to focus on truly acting upon that
faith that we have because sometimes our laziness catches up to us.

I think I might have mentioned this before, but I feel a theme that has
been more prominent in the people we talk with, either they are really
interested and sincere, or they are completely closed to the teachings
we bring.

I love you guys,

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

No Texas visit is complete without purchasing a Texas Longhorn Belt Buckle

Well there is exciting news from this week, Ernesto got the Aaronic
Priesthood! Then also this Tuesday we got a call from President Drake,
Elder Croney, who was serving with Elder Syrie in the English ward in
Liberty, got his Visa and went to the Czech Republic, but they pulled me
over to the English ward that evening. This week as you probably know,
was pretty interesting for me. It was a great week though because Elder
Syrie and I have been really putting our faith and trust in the Lord. We
don't have too many people that we are teaching, but we were able to
follow the Spirit to know where to go to find people and to know what to
teach. In fact after President Drake shared his insights and the way
that some missionaries in his mission had been led by the Lord, we have
done that same method a couple of times and we know of two streets that
we need to knock, one of them is currently flooded and there is no way
of getting there. We were able to continue teaching Margaret S, and
we actually were able to go over and give her a blessing yesterday
because she wasn't feeling well, making it so she couldn't come to
church on Sunday, and she felt better immediately. She could feel the
love of God for her and she could feel His care in sending us to help. I
love the Priesthood and the abilities it has.

Speaking of Margaret, she is pushing forward with faith, she just ran
out of her medication and it was causing her to have pain and have
unclear thoughts, so the blessing was an immediate relief of that. She
is a very faith-filled person and she has a desire to keep learning and
feeling the Spirit. There is no doubt in my mind that she will be
baptized, but we have to push it back to a later date.

I am excited to be here in the Liberty Ward and work with the English
people, and I have been finding a theme in the people we come in contact
with. As we have faith that the Lord will lead us to prepared people,
we have been led to people who have had discontent with what they have,
or they have been to many churches and haven't found one that really
felt right. We look forward to teaching many new people, including
Ernesto C's sister, who we found yesterday while biking around.

The transfer ends on March 31st, so I don't know if I'll stay or not, I
have mixed feelings about it because I miss Spanish, but I love these
people.

Hey guys, sorry for the short letter, but this week was pretty rough, we
were trying to find investigators and having no success, then the days
that we planned some time to go out and contact and knock had multiple
things put us behind schedule or make us leave the apartment late. One
of the most exciting parts about the week was the fact that we were able
to get one of our investigators to come with us to our dinner with his
cousin, who is one of the members. Our investigator, Rafael, was able to
learn a lot and the member, Seth, was able to testify as well as
clarify some things for Rafael. I feel like it was mutually beneficial,
and it helped Rafael be open to the teaching.

In our search for investigators, a name of one of the people that I
contacted with Elder Smith came to mind, and we were able to teach him
this last week, and he is extremely open to the teachings and is
receptive. He seems to have the true desire to learn the gospel as well
as act on it, but sadly he will be out of town for two weeks for work.
We have high hopes for him when he returns.

Other than that, there was a bunch of contacting and a couple of good
new member lessons with the Chavez family.

t sounds like you all had a great week! This week continued to go
well for us, but we have been facing problems getting members to
lessons. I personally feel like that is because most of our lessons
haven't been very set up, we just end up having to stop by some of the
people. Other than that, we have been seeing miracles happen as we get
outside and contact. We were able to teach three people and give
multiple referrals, including those three people, to the English Sisters
and Elders. Both of their areas have been struggling recently, so it
was a blessing for them to receive those referrals. We also saw multiple
miracles because of specific prayers, I want to tell you about a couple
of them.

The first one happened on Tuesday in the evening, while I was in my area
on exchanges with Elder Smith, one of my Zone Leaders. We had our
lessons at 7 and 8pm fall through, so I had no idea what to do, it was
8:30, so I decided to start heading on the 10 minute drive back to the
apartment because there was an investigator of ours that lives down the
road from us. She wasn't home. I thought that we could either head in
early or go contacting, I chose the latter. I drove to a trailer park
that was also close to home and we walked around there, we got to the
end of the park, and headed back. Nobody was outside, and I didn't want
to be that rude guy who knocks on someone's door at 8:45pm. We had
jokingly mentioned milkshakes earlier, so as I went to keep walking down
the road and said to Elder Smith, "Well, unless you want to go get
milkshakes, I have no idea what to do." Elder Smith said, "Well, there's
more of a chance that we can talk to someone at Dairy Queen than out
here," and I agreed and we were talking about how to make our Dairy
Queen visit purpose driven. We went to Dairy Queen and on the way we
said to each other, "8:50 contacting miracles!" While we were there, we
talked with the cashier and brought up church and it seemed like it was
going well, but we didn't get the chance to invite her to do anything.
We both felt like that wasn't quite enough, but we started on our way
out the door. While walking out we noticed a guy kinda staring at us and
he waved, but we walked out to the truck and didn't talk to him. Elder
Smith mentioned, "It kinda looked like that guy wanted to talk to us,"
so we decided to go back inside, even though it was 8:58, and talk to
him. He only spoke Spanish, so I took over, and he turned out to be
really interested. He mentioned that he was here in America from his
home country of Nicaragua because he was trying to send money home to
help build a temple for God and he had me translate for him to ask Elder
Smith a question. The question was, "What is it that moved you to come
back and talk to me?" Elder Smith said that he felt like he needed to,
or that the Spirit was telling him to, I felt the same. I explained that
as missionaries, we are messengers from God, sent to bring a message to
his children who he has prepared for the message. When Elder Smith and I
got back to the car, he asked me if we had just witnessed a miracle and
asked me to tell him what happened, when I told him, he told me he had
prayed to the Lord when we first went to contact that we would find
somebody for my area, then when we went to Dairy Queen he prayed that we
would find that person at Dairy Queen, and we found him because we
followed the prompting that the Spirit gave us. I commented that I
wasn't even hungry because I had eaten something that didn't agree with
my stomach, but I had brought up shakes as a joke, but we decided that
shakes came back into my mind probably as a prompting from the Spirit.

We were astounded by what God did through us that night, so we decided
to pray specifically as a companionship the next day for something to
happen. The next day, Wednesday, we went through our plans, and by 2pm
all of our plans from then until 5pm had fallen through. We decided to
pull the car over and pray before going anywhere because I was aimlessly
driving. We asked that the name of a person he wanted us to visit would
come to our minds, and right when we did that, the name, Sister
Bufford, came to mind. We called, no answer. Stopped by her work, nobody
was there. We even went to her house, nobody was there. We knew there
had to have been a reason to go there, so we went contacting, and found
some people, and decided to start heading off. We started driving away
and decided to pull over and offer a prayer of gratitude and also to
know if there was any other reason for us to be there. Right then
another name came to my mind, Hector, so I got his address and put it in
the GPS, and started on our way, which took us past the Bufford's home,
and there was a car. We went over and the Bufford's weren't home, but
their friend was there, and we got to teach him. He ended up being one
of the referrals given to the Dayton Sisters. When we finished all of
that, it was almost 5pm, we were back on schedule!

The power of specific prayers are real, there were other experiences with it this last week, but it always ended with miracles.

It sounds like you all had an interesting week, and that there were a
lot of birthday parties celebrated! This week wasn't the best for us,
but we tried making the best of it. We ended up having a lot of
appointments cancel or fall through, but during those times we decided
to go contact referrals or go walk around contacting and we were able to
see the blessings of God as we did that. Our branch is in need of more
Melchizedek Priesthood holders to be able to separate more from the
English ward. This week we found out that a family of four is moving
into the branch and the father of this family is a Melchizedek
Priesthood holder! We also found out that there are two more inactive
Melchizedek Priesthood holders that live in the area and are willing to
talk with us. One has said that he wants to come to church, he just
needs a ride. We have also seen the blessings in the form of new
investigators--three of the four lessons that we taught to investigators
this week were with new people, and the last one was with an
investigator that we haven't been able to talk to for about a month.

The investigator that we weren't able to contact for a month is Maria
M. Since the death of her mother to cancer a few
months ago, and her husband, who was supposedly doing fine after his eye
surgery in Mexico, has recently started having problems again, and he
is receiving treatments. She has been really worried and depressed due
to those things, and miraculously we showed up just during this time
that she has started to feel bad again. We were able to give her the
help that she has been needing; she specifically mentioned that she felt
like she was knocking on a bunch of closed doors and is trying to find
her way through this time, but she can't seem to find the right way to
go. I suddenly had the phrase used in 2 Nephi 31:17 "For the gate by
which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water" come into my
head. It was perfect because in Spanish the word used for "gate" is the
same as the word for "door", which is "puerta". We were able to explain
to her that the reason we come and the reason we teach these things is
because we have found the door, or gate, that we need to enter, and we
are on the path that leads to Eternal Life and we want everyone to know
it. She obviously felt the Spirit testifying to her the truthfulness of
these things and we left her 2 Nephi 31 as a reading commitment and she
committed to read an pray to know if these things are true. I truly love
that woman, and I feel a stronger connection with her because Mom wrote
me a letter that said that when she was about 27, she lost her mother
to cancer, and I was able to share that with Maria and that the gospel
knowledge and assurance is what pulled Mom through that. I honestly feel
like she will progress if she just lets the Spirit work with her.

I love you guys, and sorry, no pictures this week either, I need to get a
new memory card reader thing for sending pictures, which I'll probably
buy today.

I'm just kidding about not having time (or the desire to write:). We just had transfers and Elder Gamez and I are
actually staying together for a third transfer! This is the first time
that either of us have had a companion for three transfers, but the
twist is that we ended up getting a trio, our other companion is named
Elder Reed. He came out with Elder Heath and Elder Anderson trained him
in the same district as me.

This last week went decently well, we had a really hard time contacting
some people that we have been teaching, and some of the less-actives in
the branch are active now, so our number of lessons took a huge hit. We
were working a lot towards finding new people and new areas that are
more densely populated with Hispanics. It really seems like we will be
able to turn around the area this week though because with Elder Reed,
we have knocked on a total of three or four doors while finding, a lady
opened the first one and talked a little bit with us and then let us
right in, we got to teach her and she is going to let us come back, so
she is a new investigator. Then we knocked a couple more without any
answers, but then the last one we knocked we ended up with a potential
investigator, and he seems really willing. I know that this transfer we
are capable of baptizing, and I honestly feel like if we do our part and
have the faith, we could baptize multiple people, as long as we put
that trust in the Lord.

It sounds like you all had a good week, but I still don't see any
family pictures :P :( I can't believe Jacen is already turning 5, I remember
playing with him back in the old
apartment. It is crazy how time flies. Elder Gamez and I were talking
about how these 2 transfers have blended into 1 and have flown by! We
get transfer calls this weekend, which is a little hard to believe...but
what is harder to believe is that it is February 9th and it is 79
degrees outside, and it is only about 1:20pm, I hope this doesn't mean
that this summer will be extremely hot...

This week went really well, we were able to make progress with most of
the people we have been working with. Over the last few weeks the
attendance in the branch has been going up! It has been in the mid to
high 40s instead of in the 30s! We have had some of the less-active
families from the branch as well as investigators there each week. The
highlights of the week were the marriage and baptisms of Ernesto and
Francisca Chavez, we were able to meet the sons of Ernesto and
Francisca's daughters and talk with them and we will be trying to meet
with them to share our message sometime this week because they are all
interested and willing to learn more about what has helped their parents
so much.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve here in the Trinity River
Branch, I have learned so much while serving here! I am glad to be of
service to the branch and to the people here. The Chavez family has
grown so much in their understanding and they can feel the Spirit
working with them. Ernesto and Francisca were both in tears during the
baptismal service and wedding and were so happy they couldn't describe
it.

I can only describe it as them having found the Pearl of Great Price
and having given all of themselves to get it and accept it into their
lives. I am so glad to have been part of the Chavez's lives and
conversion, now I hope to be able to be part of the lives and
conversions of their children.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

This week went very well, though there definitely were a
few stumbling blocks, but we were able to work past them to help the
people in our area. We were extremely excited when we went to church to
see the Calte family at church all together, as well as Ephraim actually
making it to church, same with Hermano Xolot, and the Noyola family,
and that wasn't the end of it. What made us overjoyed was the fact that
the Chavez family made it to 2 of the hours rather than just 1. We were
able to talk with them after the meetings and set plans for them going
to the court with a member to get their marriage license papers all
filled out so they will be able to get married on Friday, as well as put
together the baptismal program.

This week
we made progress with almost everyone we were able to meet with! We
visited Ephraim and found out why he wasn't doing the things he should
be doing, and helping him know the "why" behind them. We also helped him
know that by doing these things, he will be able to feel the spirit and
feel what he felt when he was baptized. That ended with me telling him
about one of my favorite Book of Mormon stories, the 2000 stripling
warriors, and leaving it with him so he would read it. We were able to
get him a ride to church and help him progress towards his return to
church. We were also able to help Carlos, who goes to church each week,
but isn't a member, resolve his problem with the Book of Mormon and
express his other concern about church. The daughters of Hermana Noyola,
who aren't members, progressed a lot this week, they finally went to
young women's and had a great lesson! We found out that they had real
intent, a sincere heart, and faith in Christ, which are all the things
necessary to receive an answer about the truth of these things. They
just didn't understand those first few steps from what we teach, so now
they'll progress quite soon.

We just had transfers and Elder Gamez and I are
actually staying together for a third transfer! This is the first time
that either of us have had a companion for three transfers, but the
twist is that we ended up getting a trio--our other companion is named
Elder Reed. He came out with Elder Heath and Elder Anderson trained him
in the same district as me.

This last week went
decently well. We had a really hard time contacting some people that we
have been teaching, and some of the less-actives in the branch are
active now, so our number of lessons took a huge hit. We were working a
lot towards finding new people and new areas that are more densely
populated with Hispanics. It really seems like we will be able to turn
around the area this week though because with Elder Reed, we have
knocked on a total of three or four doors while finding-- a lady opened
the first one and talked a little bit with us and then let us right in. We got to teach her and she is going to let us come back, so she is a
new investigator. Then we knocked a couple more without any answers, but
then the last one we knocked we ended up with a potential investigator. He seems really willing to open his heart to our message. I know that in this transfer we are capable
of baptizing, and I honestly feel like if we do our part and have the
faith, we could baptize multiple people, as long as we put that trust in
the Lord.

It sounds like you all had a good week, but I still
don't see any family pictures :P It is crazy how time flies. Elder Gamez and I were
talking about how these 2 transfers have blended into 1 and have flown
by! We get transfer calls this weekend, which is a little hard to
believe...but what is harder to believe is that it is February 9th and
it is 79 degrees outside, and it is only about 1:20pm, I hope this
doesn't mean that this summer will be extremely hot...

This
week went really well, we were able to make progress with most of the
people we have been working with. Over the last few weeks the attendance
in the branch has been going up! It has been in the mid to high 40s
instead of in the 30s! We have had some of the less-active families from
the branch, as well as investigators, there each week. The highlights of
the week were the marriage and baptisms of the Chavez family! We were able to meet their sons and daughters and
talk with them. They are all interested and willing
to learn more about what has helped their parents 'shine' so much, so we will be trying to meet with them to share our
message sometime this week.

I
am so grateful for the opportunity to serve here in the Trinity River
Branch, I have learned so much while serving here! I am glad to be of
service to the branch and to the people here. The Chavez family has
grown so much in their understanding and they can feel the Spirit
working with them. Ernesto and Francisca were both in tears during the
baptismal service and wedding and were so happy they couldn't describe
it. I can only describe it as them having found the Pearl of Great Price
and having given all of themselves to get it and accept it into their
lives. I am so glad to have been part of the Chavez's lives and
conversion, now I hope to be able to be part of the lives and
conversions of their children.
I do have pictures, but didn't bring the camera's cable, so maybe next week.

This week was great! We
met almost every one of our goals! It is a great feeling to be able to
humble ourselves and to push forward with faith. We would have met our
member present goal of 5 if the members didn't have to cancel on us. We
saw so much help from the Lord and the branch this week! Last week I
mentioned how the branch came up with their Branch Mission Goal of 15
baptisms and they are willing to do what it takes to achieve it. We
could tell this from all the help we received and from their excitement and
desire for the work. In a few weeks they will have 2 of their 15
baptisms achieved because the Chavez family set a date for their
marriage! They decided to get married on the 6th of February, and
President Escobar and his wife are getting them the paperwork and
helping them fill it out. The branch is so excited! They are already
making plans for a little reception that they are going to throw for the
Chavez family as well as making a cake for them! I am so happy, I don't
know how to express it, I just know this family will be great! This
Monday they mentioned to the Escobars', during the lesson, that they haven't
met the bishop yet, so President Escobar explained that a big
congregation is a ward and has a bishop, but a small one like ours is a
branch and has the branch president. They responded so well! They just
said, "Well, we're going to join and help it get bigger then!"

That
is the biggest progress that was made this week, but we had the
opportunity to teach Evangelina a couple of this this week. She had her daughters there
one of the times, so we included them in the lesson, but the second time
we taught it was just her and it went really well! We
taught her the restoration and about the Book of Mormon, and when we
shared a scripture with her, she continued reading further after reading
the one we shared, and she decided to read aloud one of the scriptures.
She said she really liked it, it was 2 Nephi 25:29 and it reads:

"And
now behold, I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ,
and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye
must bow down before him, and worship him with all your might, mind, and
strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this ye shall in nowise be
cast out."

We really see her potential and she
really desires to come to church and continue forward in the gospel
because she feels that it is true. Sadly, she will be in Mexico for
the next 2 weeks, but she said she would talk with her father while she
is there and ask him if the missionaries can come and teach him as well,
and if he says yes, we will send his information as a referral to the
missionaries over there. I have no doubt that she will be baptized as
well when she gets home from Mexico.

Other than
our work with them, we worked with some of the less-active members, and
one family actually let their nonmember daughter come to church even
though they couldn't make it. We have been able to include the branch president's son, Aaron, to work with a less-active young man, Kenny. We have made some good progress. We have
plans to involve Aaron in the visits whenever it is possible.

I love this area so much!

I
hope you all have a great week and enjoy the 60 degree weather we are
having, oh wait, that is us in Texas, well, I hope you enjoy the weather
whatever it may be!

Saturday, January 24, 2015

For us, this
last week has been full of progress! We were able to visit many
families, including a new one, and help them take steps towards our
Heavenly Father. We were excited to see the progress that the Chavez
family made this week. Francisca approached her boss on Tuesday and
asked for Sunday off of work, and he said yes! On Saturday, they gave us
the sad news that her boss was not going to be able to work that Sunday
morning, so she would have to work. They still were able
to make it to Sacrament Meeting, and they brought their son, Manuel, and
they all had a great time! This was their second time at Sacrament
Meeting, and they are determined to make it to the classes as well this
next week. We also caught Maria Mata at home, after about 2.5 weeks of
not being able to find her. We had a great talk with her and caught up a
little bit. She has been suffering depression since the passing of her
mother about 3 months ago, but just in these last few weeks, she has
been so busy that she didn't have time to sit down and think about the
death of her mom, so she has been happier. She told us that she loves us
coming over and it always makes her feel better, but anyways, the
conversation changed slightly and she said her oldest son, Guadalupe,
was sick almost all of last week. We offered to give him a blessing, but
I guess he wasn't home, so instead she asked us if we could go visit
somebody else! She told us about her sister that lives about 5 minutes
away and how she has been feeling more depressed than even
Maria has been. She gave us her address and we promised to go visit her
the next day. We ended up visiting her, and we had the wonderful
opportunity to teach her and help her understand the Plan of Happiness
that Heavenly Father has for us. While we were teaching her, we noticed
that her countenance was changing. She looked sad and depressed when we
got there, and while we were teaching her and while we were leaving, she
was actually happy! She also wanted us to talk with her 3 children, who
are all grown up and 2 of which are married and have their own
children, so her oldest grandson is 8 years old. I am super excited to
teach their family and get them to come unto Christ and be baptized,
especially because I think it will help Maria act more upon the
teachings.

This
Sunday evening, Elder Gamez and I had a really good heart-to-heart
talk. It ended up starting because he got frustrated with an idea for a
baptismal date for the Chavez family that I put out there. I just wanted
to understand why he disagreed, and we opened up about our feelings for
the Chavez family, as well as he brought up that he wanted me there at
the lesson because the plan was originally to go on exchanges after
P-Day. I feel so much closer to Elder Gamez now and I feel like he feels
closer to me. I just feel like I trust him and he now understands why I
have been pushing for getting the Chavez family a date as well as other
things, so I feel like our desire to work has increased as well as our
desire to baptize. He just mentioned that he feels like he loves them so
much that he almost doesn't want to let them go, he just doesn't want
to push them away by trying to get them to baptism. We decided to share
some of those feelings of love for them yesterday in our lesson with
them. We took some time in the morning and found some scriptures that
expressed those feelings and our desires for them, and we went to the
lesson prepared, as well as us having President Escobar and his family
with us. The lesson went better than we could have imagined! They are
truly gaining spiritual light and they have been noticing it, and how it
is good, so they want more. We talked about how the brother of Jared
came up with his plan to have light in their boats, expressed faith in
the Lord, and asked him if he would make the plan work. We then compared it
with a baptismal calendar. We went over the commitments on the calendar
with them and they realized how close they are, they only have 5-6 that
they haven't done yet. We invited them to be baptized on the 8th of
February, and invited them to make themselves a plan on when and how
they will live the commitments and present it to the Lord, like the
brother of Jared did. The lesson went great, and we feel like they now
share our vision and the spirit is edifying them. I am certain they will
be baptized before the end of the transfer, perhaps before the 8th of
February. They only need to get married, live the laws of the tithe and
fast, attend a baptism (optional, but recommended), and have the
interview. I can't wait to see the fruits of my labors here!

I
also wanted to ask you, mom, what ended up helping you get through your
depression? I would like to share what helped you with Maria Mata and
her sister Evangelia.

About Me

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and have made my decision to serve my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for 2 years before heading to college. I've been called to serve a Spanish speaking mission in Houston Texas, and am excited to be able to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Though I've always been a member of this church, it was my choice to serve a mission. I'm excited to bring the plan of happiness to others, and help them to heighten their joys here on earth, and in the eternities to come.